I left it there for the fools but they will never find it.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Michael,

The writer of the Diary has a "post-romantic" attitude in his writing, poetry is the base line in his work...an artistic bent in writing even.

Imho, the answer to whom may have written the Diary, showed this bent in his others writings too.

Yes, I am talking of a known person. You can all work out whom and keep it to yourselves. The writer is dead, I might add.
The clues, for me, are in the clues, and from whence they came.

And it's not a "Springtime for building either"!!!!!!

That's my rare tuppenyha'penny-worth on the Diary said for another couple of years!




Phil

[RivkahChaya]

I have no idea what you are talking about, nor whether that's just a misuse of "whom," or some kind of riddle.

But, in any event, even if Maybrick did write the diary, y'all realize it doesn't follow that he was in fact, Jack the Ripper. Could have been Maybrick composing a work of fiction.

Most people know what I think of the diary already, so I don't need to add that.

[RavenDarkendale]

Phil

Your writer sounds a lot like Oscar Wilde. Since we have Lewis Carrol on the suspect list (via extremely improbable anagrams ) might as well throw in Oscar! He was not unknown to the West London houses of debauchery, was eccentric, to say the least, thought he was much more clever than anyone else, constantly stole quotations and passed them off as his own wit, etc. Wilde published The Happy Prince and Other Tales in 1888

I am not taking this seriously, for everyone's edification, it just struck me as funny. I have said my piece on the diary other places and it hasn't changed.

God Bless

Darkendale

[Phil H]

If Oscar was JtR, then I'm Bosie - and I'm not.

Phil

[RavenDarkendale]

If Oscar was JtR, then I'm Bosie - and I'm not.

Phil

True, and I said don't take it seriously. You can find circumstantial evidence on almost anyone to make a case in favor of their guilt. We have no direct evidence that would stand up in court for any of the suspects. As the investigators did not lack for suspects, they must have felt the same. It isn't what you suspect or even know for certain, it's what you can prove.

For example, knowing Al Capone was guilty of racketeering, smuggling, and even murder never sent him to Alcatraz. Tax evasion did. It was what they could prove.

[RivkahChaya]

Your writer sounds a lot like Oscar Wilde... might as well throw in Oscar! He was not unknown to the West London houses of debauchery, was eccentric, to say the least, thought he was much more clever than anyone else, constantly stole quotations and passed them off as his own wit, etc. Wilde published The Happy Prince and Other Tales in 1888

One problem: Oscar Wilde was a good writer.

Albeit, if I believed that the diary was someone attempt at fiction, written close to the time of the murders, I'd suggest The Picture of Dorian Gray as an influence. Dorian Gray wasn't published until 1890, though, so that lets Maybrick off the hook as the amateur novelist.

True, and I said don't take it seriously. You can find circumstantial evidence on almost anyone to make a case in favor of their guilt. We have no direct evidence that would stand up in court for any of the suspects. As the investigators did not lack for suspects, they must have felt the same. It isn't what you suspect or even know for certain, it's what you can prove.

There's circumstantial evidence, and there's circumstantial evidence. For example, the fact that Lizzie Borden's stepmother was killed more than an hour before her father, and that her father's body was found immediately after death-- still bleeding, in fact-- by Lizzie, at a time when finding one body cold and stiff, and the other warm and oozing was the only way to prove beyond any doubt who died first, is really excellent circumstantial evidence against Lizzie, because by the inheritance laws of the time, she and her sister got all her father's money if her stepmother died first, whereas, if her father died first, even if they died very close together in time, Lizzie and her sister would get just a very small maintenance trust, and would lose the house they lived in, with essentially the whole estate going to Abby Borden's nearest relative.

The only reason it didn't hang her, I think, is that the jury didn't want to hang a woman, and there were no facilities in Massachusetts at the time for long-term incarceration of a woman.

Druitt happening to commit suicide sometime after the "last" murder is, on the other hand, an example of very poor circumstantial evidence.

Just because circumstantial evidence can be flawed, and is often the last resort of the conspiracy theorist, is no reason to write it off entirely. Eyewitness evidence is actually the least reliable evidence there is, as recent studies of human memory have shown. (Check out the work over the last 25 years on memory by Elizabeth Loftus.) Unless the person being identified was previously known to the witness, or their interaction was extensive (which is to say, in the first place, that they had an interaction, and the witness did not simply see the person sitting across the room), the chances of the witness making a mistake are very good. When the witness is also the victim, the chances of the witness making a mistake even after an extensive interaction are still pretty good.

For example, knowing Al Capone was guilty of racketeering, smuggling, and even murder never sent him to Alcatraz. Tax evasion did. It was what they could prove.

But, he did go to Alcatraz, which is not generally a place where white-collar criminals are sent. Ah, judicial discretion.

[caz]

Caz - this is a dialogue of the deaf/ships that pas in the night.

Despite several off us spelling out in details our reasons for our view - you cannoy or will not seem to see it.

If we are not right, then there are only a few conclusions to be drawn:

a) the diary is what it claims to be, the diarist (Maybrick or some other) recorded what he did. Full stop. If THAT is not the case, then:

b) the forger saw the picture at some stage BEFORE it was made public - and thus it can be assumed he was a police man, an official or one of those with access to the files (of which we know there were a number);

c) the diary is based on the photo and thus the scientific tests are wrong and it post dates the 70s;

d) the dairist was going on aboyut something else and readers have either found something to fit his description (incorrectly) or the whole issue is a red-herring;

e) those of us who argue the diary record what is in the picture though it tries NOT to appear to do so by "clever wording", are correct.

I cannot see any other options.

Phil

Hi Phil,

I could go for perhaps b) or d), although I would have to reiterate that any initials 'seen' on the wall in the photo would not fit the diarist's description of the clue left in front.

Your last option, e) makes no sense because again, the diary does not record 'what is in the picture', if you are talking about the supposed FM in blood on the wall. How does "clever wording" come into it?

If Macnaghten had access to the photos he had a number of friends and acquaintances who were very much into true crime and he could well have shown them around.

Love,

Caz
X

[Jonathan H]

Sims had his own copies of the photos from about 1890. At his death he was found to have the 'Dear Boss' letter in his voluminous crime archive too.

To a previous poster:

Druitt did not kill himself after the last murder. He inconveniently killed himself over two years before the final Jack murder (an elongated timeline which includes another Jack murder, if not two more.)

[caz]

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for this. I suspected as much re Sims.

When I first read the diary I thought I could detect one or two Gilbert & Sullivan inspired lines of doggerel, which in turn led me to the Grossmith brothers, authors of Diary of a Nobody, which I found had first been serialised in Punch in 1888-9 and contains a reference in the entry for January 5th 1889 to a "double event" (two pieces of good news in this instance). There is a deliberate gap in the entries between August 29th and October 30th 1888, explained in that entry: "I should very much like to know who has wilfully torn the last five or six weeks out of my diary. It is perfectly monstrous! Mine is a large scribbling diary, with plenty of space for the record of my everyday events, and in keeping up that record I take (with much pride) a great deal of pains".

Believe it or not, when I did a bit more research I found out that the actor Weedon Grossmith (who at one time was managing the Pavilion Theatre near Buck's Row) was acquainted with both Macnaghten and Sims. Macnaghten, whom Weedon describes as 'the "boss" [sic] of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard' had Weedon's portrait as the infamous criminal Jack Sheppard hanging next to a print of the real Sheppard.

Weedon possessed a book about the life of Dick Turpin, which he says 'printed all the dreadful language that Turpin uttered during his robberies'. He goes on: 'I could scarcely keep it in MY library, so I made a present of it to George R. Sims, as he has a collection of criminal literature, being a great student of criminology'.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

First, the usual caveat that I think the diary is a fake, and a modern fake.

That said, what is the larger context of "I left it there for the fools but they will never find it"? I don't have a copy of the diary handy, and I haven't read it in years, so I can't look it up. I can't even find the full paragraph online.

However, whoever wrote the diary probably did mean for "it" to stand for something, and not be entirely prevaricating, if that makes sense. I mean, IMO, the whole diary is prevaricated, but it's not the Beale cipher, with "dead ends," if you get what I mean.

Now, the thing that is mysteriously unaccounted for at the Kelly crimes scene is her heart. The coroner states that it is "absent," but he may mean merely absent from the body when he went to examine it. It is also not in the inventory of parts collected from the room, and there is speculation that the killer took it with him, although there does not seem to be a contemporary record that the police were certain it was entirely gone from the crime scene, and the idea that the killer took it is a presumption based on its not otherwise being accounted for in a pretty thorough record.

So, I am suggesting that the diarist intended "it" to refer to MJK's heart. He does not come right out and say so, because a record of it's being collected in a walk-through of the apartment might turn up, or it could be found in a jar somewhere in a basement at Scotland Yard, meaning that police did have it all along, and it just wasn't with the body at the time of autopsy.

But as the heart is the only real "mystery" about the Kelly crime scene, aside from the obvious one of who killed her. I honestly can't remember whether the diarist makes any reference to the heart directly. If he does, then, of course, this is wrong, but it seems more likely to me that the diarist had something like this in mind, rather than a message on a wall, or formed in flesh and chemise.

There are the other Kelly questions-- the lingering suspicion that she was pregnant, which seems by the best evidence not to have been the case, although, by just saying "it," and not being more specific, the diarist can shift the antecedent from the heart, to the fetus.

Lastly, I think if initials were intended, the line would be "I left them there for the fools but they will never find them."

Hi Rivkah,

Some interesting ideas here and much food for thought.

'Sir Jim' says he regrets that he "did not take any of it away with me it is supper time, I could do with a kidney or two ha ha", so in theory the missing heart might have served as the "it" left for the fools. But he also claims to have read about this murder in the papers, in which case he might have been expected to learn that all Kelly's body parts had been accounted for at the scene, which is what the papers reported. So why would he think "the fools" had not found the heart and never would?

On the other hand, was our hoaxer burning his boats this time by claiming that nothing, including the heart, was taken from the scene? Dr. Bond noted that the heart was absent from the body (and 'Sir Jim' writes regarding the "deeds" he committed on Kelly: "no heart no heart", suggesting the author knew this much at least). But curiously no record was made of where it ended up, whereas the uterus, kidneys, liver, breasts, spleen and intestines had their exact positions noted. This suggests that the heart may not have been accounted for, contrary to the press reports.

If this is true, I suspect the authorities were not keen to publicise the fact that they had not found Kelly's heart. Keeping this titbit out of the papers would have prevented the nutters from sending hearts through the post in the wake of the Lusk kidney, but equally if one had arrived it would have shown inside knowledge of the crime.

In summary, I can't quite imagine how "the fools" were meant to have missed an organ like the heart, supposedly left in front, or why our hoaxer would have imagined they did miss it.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

We'd have to identify the forger, and then trust him to be truthful about what was in his mind at a certain point in the writing process.

Anyone got a planchette handy?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hello Michael,

The writer of the Diary has a "post-romantic" attitude in his writing, poetry is the base line in his work...an artistic bent in writing even.

Imho, the answer to whom may have written the Diary, showed this bent in his others writings too.

Yes, I am talking of a known person. You can all work out whom and keep it to yourselves. The writer is dead, I might add.
The clues, for me, are in the clues, and from whence they came.

And it's not a "Springtime for building either"!!!!!!

That's my rare tuppenyha'penny-worth on the Diary said for another couple of years!

Phil

If you are thinking of McCormick, Phil, I think you'd better think it out again.

Love,

Caz
X

PS Come on Chelsea!

[caz]

One problem: Oscar Wilde was a good writer.

Not a problem at all, Rivkah. It takes a good writer to write like a bad one when the need arises. (The Lusk letter anyone?) The diary author was not writing as Wilde or Dickens, but as 'Sir Jim' the whore killer, and was therefore portraying him as an indifferently educated boorish brute of a man. The writing had to be suitably bad, because if it had been any good it would have been terrible.

Love,

Caz
X

[Bridewell]

It

I left it there for the fools but they will never find it

You have to wonder why he wasn't a little more specific about what the 'it' was, to which he was alluding. It's not as though anyone was likely to be able to return to the crime scene after reading the diary and locate the item. I think 'Jack', had it been he, would have delighted in detailing the exact nature of the item in order to emphasise the extent of his own cleverness. Then again, how clever was he if, in 1888, he couldn't get hold of an 1888 diary?

[RivkahChaya]

Not a problem at all, Rivkah. It takes a good writer to write like a bad one when the need arises. (The Lusk letter anyone?) The diary author was not writing as Wilde or Dickens, but as 'Sir Jim' the whore killer, and was therefore portraying him as an indifferently educated boorish brute of a man. The writing had to be suitably bad, because if it had been any good it would have been terrible.

Love,

Caz
X

But the diary is bad in such unclever ways. Someone like Oscar Wilde would write, at the very least, quotable bad writing. I mean, the American writer Alice Walker has written in the voice of people who are barely literate, and made them fascinating. If someone like Wilde had written the diary, surely it would be more interesting.

Do you see what I'm getting at?